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SY: So when your family, then, had to pack up to go to camp, you remember that process, how you, what you took, what you left behind?

YM: I know my sister and her husband owned a house, so a lot of our stuff went into their garage. And I do remember as we left the house that day to go to Santa Anita we had this lone sewing machine sitting in our dining room 'cause somebody had purchased it but hadn't picked it up, so I thought here was an empty house with this one little sewing machine sitting there. I said goodbye to the house and we went to, St. Mary's was the pick up place for that area, so we all took our one suitcase. And I look at the suitcase now and I was wondering how we ever got enough stuff in there, but we survived.

SY: You don't remember what you took or what you decided?

YM: Yeah, so sometimes I look at snapshots and I think, how did I get that, I know I wore that in high school, I must've taken it with me. [Laughs] And we had to take linens, so that, I don't know if I packed linens in mine or whether we were allowed one extra, I don't know what. But when I look at the suitcase now, it's a suitcase that everybody had. It was from Sears.

SY: But it must, was it sad for you to leave the sewing machine?

YM: No, it was a sad sign that you were emptying the whole place.

SY: But you couldn't have taken it, right? It was probably too big.

YM: Probably not, no. It was what you could carry. Unless you had a portable or something, maybe, but this was a standard. It was, sat on wheels.

SY: And did your mom still do sewing at home?

YM: She, not too much at that, when I was in grammar school she used to sew my clothes for me.

SY: But by that time you were, you were more the seamstress in the family.

YM: Yeah, I'd do my own.

SY: And then did they have a car? Did you have, your family have a car?

YM: Yes. They had a, you were allowed to take your car if you wanted to, and so looking back I don't really know 'cause there's, my brother had six, that's four children and the, that's six, and that's nine of us. We couldn't have all gotten into one car, and so maybe my mother went with them and then my brother Tak and I, maybe went on a bus. I just have no recollection of how we got there.

SY: How you got, how you got to St. Mary's or how you got --

YM: Right. I don't know how we got there, how we got to St. Mary's -- to Santa Anita rather. But I know my brother drove his car. And all the cars were in the infield, there for years, for months, and I think they were encouraged to sell them, sell it or something. I think my brother sold it while he was in Santa Anita.

SY: Sold it to another party, you think?

YM: Yeah, there was somebody handling this kind of...

SY: I see. Trying to get rid of things.

YM: Yeah.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.